OT: College athlete gives up senior season for total stranger

Cameron Lyle, a University of New Hampshire shot-putter, is donating bone marrow to someone he's never met. The strain of the procedure will cause him to miss the last few meets of his senior season, including the America East championships:

A friend of mine donated one of his kidneys to a person that he never met bin essence he reasoned that he had two while somebody needed one so why not donate it and let the hospital find a match. It may have been the most selfless act that I've seen someone perform outside of an emergency situation.

Major kudos to Cameron Lyle for this. Hopefully his donation will buy this person more than a few years too. It would be even better if this meant someone had the opportunity to lead a full life, especially when those chances apparently seemed rather remote in the beginning.

That's honestly terrible. Somehow that idiot has 49,000,000 "article" views and apparently no education or experience in journalism to teach a basic sense of journalistic ethics. My high school paper had much tougher standards than whatever he's following, and we didn't have a particularly good high school paper.

Several years ago, circa 2005 or 2006, I was contacted by the Red Cross because my bone marrow was matched with a 14 year old female cancer patient from Minnesota. They asked if I'd think about donating bone marrow for her and I didn't give it a second thought. The Red Cross sent out a nurse who took like 15 vials of blood from me. These were to be reanalyzed to be absolutely sure I was a good candidate. It turned out I was. The procedure the explained is very intense. I was to go to UM Hospital for 2 straight days, it was either 8 or 10 hours per day, with the needle in while they extract the bone marrow. They explained that the procedure is not difficult but extremely taxing on the body and mind. And recovery is more difficult than one would think.

I was a few days away from the procedure when I learned the girl took a turn for the worse and eventually passed. I never got to donate. Still makes me sad to this day.

to the story but I figured one more "congrats, hero" post would only be redundant; what's the logic for the 1 year before revealing the names of the donor and recipient to each other? Just found that interesting.

that prohibit selling organs and body parts. I could be wrong since the 9th Circuit ruled that "selling" (it's not exactly selling) bone marrow was legal, but according to the article I read that only applies to states within the circuit.

was the recipient of a Marrow donation a decade ago. Although he passed away about half a year after the donation, I am so thankful to the anonymous donor who gave my friend a chance live a little longer, and more importantly the chance to keep fighting (a marrow transplant is typically the last resort for a patient).

As a result of my friend, a lot of my friends and I got registered, and one of those friends (actually a friend of mine who didn't know my friend with Leukemia at all, she just registered to support me and because she's generally awesome) ended up donating marrow a few years ago. She was thrilled to give a total stranger the chance to live (how often do most of us get that opportunity?!?)

I received an email recently from the registry letting me know that I have a rare marrow type. It turns out that I'm unlikely to ever be a match for someone in need of marrow, but if I am, I may be the only person on the registry to be a good match, or even a viable match at all.

As a previous poster noted, you can go to marrow.org and learn more about joining the registry. All it takes is swabbing the inside of your mouth and mailing the kit back. After that, you'll get about an email a year to make sure you're still interested/eligible and to keep your contact info up-to-date, and probably nothing else will happen. If you are a potential match, they'll get a hold of you and do further blood testing, and give you more information about marrow donation. If you are the best match, it can be a difficult procedure, but everything up to the point where you're definitely giving marrow and saving a life is easy and pretty much pain-free.

It's quick and easy, they send you 4 q-tips you swab the inside of your cheeks with and mail it back. In most cases, if you are a match, the procedure is also much less invasive than the one this guy went through; it's basically like giving blood.

They just recently sent me a letter to let me know that I had a very rare type, meaning that I was a little less likely to be called, but if I ever was, it was ESSENTIAL that I be committed to it, because I might very well be the only person in the database who can donate to this person. I hope, someday, I'll get to save a life, for at least a while.

Great and touching story. Thank you for sharing. It sucks how much bad news we are subjected to when things like this happen many times every day. I guess it is human nature to focus on the negative. In order for one to quantify this, just look at how many posts were on the OT Boston Bomber thread compared to this one.